Partie 4 - LA36 KB articles 1988 98 and cuttings 005 004

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4 But as the East Timorese resistance leader Jose Ramos Horta said on the BBC World Service this afternoon, the Indonesian people will not now be content with cosmetic reforms at the top. The recently formed People's Democratic Party (PRD) has, in many respects, taken up the banner of the PKI, which has itself continued to organise underground and in exile, with a number of its veteran leaders based in China. The events in Indonesia once again vindicate the remarkable insight of Karl Marx. That years can pass when nothing apparently happens. But then there comes days when the events of several years are compressed into a single moment. It is the latter days we are now seeing in Indonesia. As Mick James has explained, China's economic policy is based on a long-term strategy, founded on the country's concrete conditions and features, as well as both the positive and negative lessons learned from the attempts to build socialism in China and other countries, to eventually build a fully and comprehensively developed socialist society. This project also unfolds against a background of extremely rapid changes in international politics, economy, culture, science and technology. The process of economic globalisation, combined with the developments in communications science, information technology, satellites and so on, not to mention environmental and climatic changes, means that, more than ever before, no country in the world can be indifferent to what happens in any other. The economic fortunes of a country can be changed overnight. It is less than two years since the World Bank published a much-trumpeted report lauding the supposed miracle of the Far East's 'Tiger' economies. These developments by no means negate the validity of the socialist cause. Rather, they mature the objective basis for socialism throughout the world. Neither do they invalidate the basic Leninist thesis on the possibility and practical necessity of building socialism in a single country. But they do place on the shoulders of the working class party in power the responsibility of facing up to the new situation and challenges in good time and making the necessary changes and adjustments with the utmost flexibility and pragmatism so as to safeguard the working class state power, develop the national economy and strength, and continue the advance towards socialism from the long-term point of view.